


Off-record

by FushigiNoKuniNo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, also featuring pet tape recorders because i'm in charge here, canon-typical martin loving jon with his whole heart, jonny gave me an opening and i'm taking it, you can pry my pre-archives headcanons from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 07:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18494680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FushigiNoKuniNo/pseuds/FushigiNoKuniNo
Summary: Change comes, welcome or not. But some things are immutable.(Major spoilers through MAG 134)





	Off-record

“Statement of Martin Blackwood, Arch—”

Martin, poised over the pocket-sized tape recorder that seemed to consider his desk its home these days, gave a little huff of frustration. He would hear about that one later, more likely than not. He clasped his hands tightly, letting the sensation draw his focus back from whence it had wandered.

“...Assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute.”

As he continued, reading through Dekker’s letter in a tone as clear as he could muster, Martin found himself perversely glad of having been forced to record so many statements while Jon was away chasing leads on the Unknowing. The Martin Blackwood of two years ago would have been gasping for breath by the end of a statement like this one, mind recoiling even as his voice forged on. Now, however, he took it in without so much as a shiver.

Of course, the shiver came later, as Peter stepped out of whatever unseen space he had been inhabiting. The man’s voice, affable as it was, still felt like an icy tendril of fog curling its way through the air and down Martin’s throat. It would have been all too easy for his reaction to betray his unease...had he not been prepared to convey his displeasure instead. Given recent events, anger was natural. Predictable. No less than what was expected.

It would have been out of character, after all, for Martin _not_ to say anything about Jon. And surely Peter knew how transparent his excuses for not interceding to prevent his near-disastrous foray into the coffin would be. That he hadn’t bothered to come up with anything better came as no surprise, but it did require a response. A response that Peter waved off with sardonic quips, all too used to these exchanges by now, before striding casually into nothingness and leaving Martin to himself.

So _dismissive_ , Martin thought, replacing the tape recorder in his drawer. So _derisive_ , too, whenever the subject of Jon arose. If only Peter knew how utterly unnecessary his constant reminders about "the big picture"  were. 

“Go on, then,” he said, shutting the drawer.

But no. Peter could be much like Elias at times—quick to put any behavior he couldn’t easily understand down to short-sightedness or sheer stupidity. All too confident that he was the only truly rational one amongst them.

If, as Martin suspected, Elias had watched him suffer through the painfully awkward conversation he’d been forced to have with Jon—or heard it secondhand from Peter, who had been present, he knew—he must have thought it pathetic. Was he satisfied, Martin wondered, to behold the tragedy of Martin Blackwood, who at last heard the grudging admission of affection he had so _pitifully_ longed for, only to turn tail and run because he could not face it? Almost certainly.

But then, for all he prized his ability to see, Elias had never troubled himself to look very closely. Martin had realized this the moment the man had suggested that he was clinging to some sort of false, flattering image of Jon that was fragile enough to be shattered.

Perhaps he had never noticed that, even in the time before statements and tapes, Martin had been the one who braved the looming spectre of Jon’s ire to sneak up on him with mugs of tea when he was at a point far past tired. Perhaps he had never bothered to really listen to how Jon spoke to himself when he thought no one could hear, or consider how thoroughly that belied his more public persona. Whatever the case, he clearly didn’t realize that it had taken Martin less than three weeks to see through Jonathan Sims’ facade.

Indeed, it _had_ been with some trepidation that Martin had approached the lonely table at which Jon was sat rifling through tome upon tome for what was, by his estimate, at least the twelfth consecutive hour. As a new researcher, Jon had made it clear in short order that he preferred solitude—avoiding lunch outings, taking a reflexive step backward when spoken to, and sequestering himself in hidden corners of library at all hours to read with a thin-lipped ferocity. He clearly saw little reason to converse on topics outside of those immediately relevant to his research, and each time they had spoken, Martin without fail found himself feeling confused and stupid as Jon leapt from one thought to the next, never slowing down quite enough to expound on whatever connections he was tracing.

Yet Martin never had been one to give up on other people so easily, especially if he had to work with them. And sure, Jon was standoffish, but he generally managed to greet people when spoken to, even if he did give a little yelp of surprise first. He had listened patiently enough to Martin’s somewhat rambling explanations as he showed him around the Institute, and had taken to his work with an earnest diligence that was impossible not to admire. 

And anyway, it was late, and he had already made the tea. So he approached, mug borrowed from the Institute’s kitchen in hand...and was greeted by a rapid murmur that took him utterly aback.

“Chasing the wrong leads, again, because of course you are. Stupid.  _ Stupid. _ ” Jon slammed a book shut, then sunk his face into his hands. It was a moment before he spoke again, but when he did, the caustic edge had left his tone in favor of plain weariness. “Almost a day wasted.”

He hadn’t noticed Martin’s presence—why would he? He wouldn’t have expected to be intruded on like this. And that was what he had done, Martin thought, though it hadn’t been intentional. He felt a rush of guilt. He should leave. He _should_.

He wouldn’t.

For the first, but not the last time, he moved closer instead.

“Jon?” he said hesitantly.

Jon jumped. So did Martin, nearly splashing tea on himself.

“Christ, Martin! What are you doing here?”

Martin felt any semblance of self-assurance trickle away at Jon's tone.

“I, um...brought you tea?”

Jon looked at him as if he had lost his entire mind.

“...Why?”

“Well, I-I just,” he stammered, staring downward at the mug he clutched in both hands, “you seemed...tired?” He took a breath to steady himself, but found he couldn’t bring himself to speak above a murmur. “You’ve been at it a while.”

“I...suppose,” Jon answered slowly, “But this really wasn’t necessary.”

“Oh.” He hated how small his own voice sounded, “Right.”

Jon was still staring at him. It had been a stupid idea, hadn’t it? He hadn’t needed to go bothering someone who was trying to be left alone, just because...

Stupid. _Stupid._

...Because he suspected that _alone_ was not what Jon _wanted_ to be. But there was nothing he could do about it, was there? He'd only succeeded in making him angry.

As if in response to Martin's unspoken thoughts, Jon opened his mouth, and closed it again. Then he cleared his throat. Martin braced himself.

“I...appreciate it.”

“Oh!” _Oh._ “Do you… Do you want it, then?”

Jon’s nod was terse, but when he accepted the cup in an almost reverent way, Martin _understood_. Jon wasn’t angry. He was _confused._

That was Jon. A man with standards far beyond the realistic, who could not abide the failings of others any more than he could his own. Who dug his fingertips into his scalp and pulled at his hair as he sat hunched over his desk long past the end of what any sane person considered working hours, whispering  _ come on, what are you doing, you should have this figured out already _ to himself. Who would not, could not understand that he was worth something, that he _mattered_.

This was as true now as it had been then, Martin knew. He had spent the several months before making his deal with Peter listening to the tapes, and through it all—the insults and the denial, the conjecture and the paranoia, the peril and the fear—Jon remained the same person he had always been. He would never stop _trying_ , no matter what it cost him. He would never believe that he was already enough.

 

That was why things had to be this way. Martin had made his choice long ago.

 

He put Dekker’s statement away carefully, for inevitable future reference. As he stood, he looked at his wristwatch. Then he left the Magnus Institute, straight through the front door.

No one would question it. Martin made a habit of going out for lunch regularly. It was normal. Expected. Risky, yes, what with the many things stalking the Institute, but everything he did was a calculated risk these days. And Martin knew better than anyone that to be entirely unremarkable was the best defense against prying eyes. 

He did buy lunch, in fact. And if he, afterward, picked his way through crumbling masonry to descend into the basement of an abandoned building several blocks away from the Institute, no one was watching closely enough to notice.

 

* * *

 

 

It was perhaps forty minutes after closing his desk drawer that Martin approached the Institute via the tunnels, only to find something unexpected waiting for him.

It was the soft glow of a lamp, casting its illumination on a small desk and—was that a rug? Martin shook his head quietly, unwilling to break the silence of the place. How on earth had he managed this?

He knew _who_ had done it, of course, because said person was currently half-leaning, half-sitting on the desk, reviewing the written statement in his hands with characteristic intensity. He had a whole folder of documents behind it, it looked like. Enough to keep him occupied for quite some time, should it be necessary.

Well. Odd as they were, the new furnishings would make it easier to move undetected. Martin was far better at creeping about unnoticed than he had been, but without the ability to seemingly vanish into thin air like Peter, it was always something of a gamble.

He walked forward slowly, trusting in the plush flooring to conceal his footsteps. He kept his eyes on the man by the desk, alert for any sign that the archivist might look up, but none was forthcoming. So he took in a breath and held it, advancing with ginger steps until he stood only a few paces away.

Then he announced his presence. Loudly.

“Hi, Jon!”

Jon jumped, dropping the statement and folder at his feet. A mess of papers sluiced out onto the floor of the tunnel.

“Good lord, Martin, must you do that every time?” The archivist spared him a cross look before crouching down to pick up the fallen documents. Martin joined him, laughing as he replied.

“I’m sorry, you just make it so easy.”

“Be that as it may, at this rate you’re likely to give me a heart attack before any of the eldritch abominations manage it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Martin repeated, though he couldn’t help but grin. For his part, Jon was making a valiant effort at keeping a straight face, but Martin could see his lip twitch as he stood up and offered his free hand. Martin took it, and Jon pulled him to his feet.

“How long do we have?”

“Oh, several hours, I’d say. It being ‘family business,’ and everything.”

Jon made a face.

“Yeah,” Martin sighed, “but at least it stops him lurking while I try to do spreadsheets.”

Among other things.

“I have time as well,” Jon said, “Basira’s gone off somewhere.” From his scowl, Martin could guess what the answer would be, but he asked anyway.

“No progress?”

“I don’t know,” Jon ran a hand through his hair distractedly, letting out a loud exhalation, “If I _have_ managed to convince her that I can be useful, we may get some insight into the degree to which she’s actually willing to cooperate with Elias.”

“...But?”

“You heard her.” He had. She had been on the tape about the Everchase, if only briefly. “She’s getting worse, Martin.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Jon wouldn’t meet his eyes. Instead he rambled on, distracted.

“I thought with Daisy back, it might be different, but even to her, she’s—”

Jon flinched. After a brief pause, during which Martin was quite sure the man did not breathe, he slowly lifted his gaze to meet Martin’s own. He resembled nothing so much as someone who had just trod on a landmine and was waiting for the blast to go off.

As well he should.

“I can’t believe you did that, Jon.”

“Martin…” Oh, yes, he knew what was coming. Peter and Elias might not have understood Jon well enough to accurately criticize, but Martin certainly did, and he was not about to let this particular stunt slide.

“What, Jon? What could you possibly have to say for yourself after diving headfirst into the…” he waved his hands a bit, searching for an appropriate phrase, “statement-coffin of death?”

“Technically, you can’t die in the—” Martin folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. But if I had asked you...”

“I would’ve stopped you, yes! And I would have been right to!”

“I told you about the anchor. You agreed—”

“Agreed that _something_ like that _could_ work. But I never would have let you go in there without a backup plan.”

“There wasn’t time for that. It needed to be done before Basira got back. And I was reasonably confident that it would work.” Jon stuck his lower lip out just a bit as he said this, as he always did when he was being petulant. It was adorable, but it wouldn’t work.

“No, you weren’t.”

“...Excuse me?”

“Come on, Jon, I’m not an idiot. No one ends a conversation with ‘thank you for everything,’ least of all you. I knew something was wrong, last time, but I was already nearly late getting back—which I suspect is why you kept me so long to begin with.”

Jon deflated, shoulders slumping. 

“I didn’t want to go without… You know. Saying goodbye.”

Martin resisted the urge to hug him. He was supposed to be in trouble, after all.

“You shouldn’t have gone _at all_.”

“You… You’re right. I know you’re right, I just…” 

Martin held up one hand.

“I know why you did it,” he said, because he did. “But you can’t keep treating yourself as our most expendable resource.”

“I am  _not_.”

“You _are_. And you have to stop risking your life recklessly.”

“Right,” Jon mumbled, folding his arms and looking away again, “I’ll be sure to risk my life deliberately and methodically in the future.”

Martin sighed.

It _would_ come back to that. It always did.

Silence stretched between them.

Martin knew Jon was deathly afraid of losing him too. He had told him as much. With _words_ , even. And still, Jon trusted him. Helped him maintain his uneasy alliance with the Lonely. Didn’t pry into the secrets he knew Martin kept to protect them both.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but Jon got there first.

“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this, am I?”

No. But he was trying, and that counted for something. Had always counted. So he only said,

“You’re better than you were.”

Jon gave him a wan half-smile for that.

“Thank you. For saving me. Pity that Lukas found out.”

“I don’t know. It seemed to annoy him, so that’s a plus?”

Jon snorted.

“Still, it would have saved us considerable trouble if I had just _known_ about the recorders to begin with.”

Martin didn’t need to say _the Beholding wanted you in there_. That was plain to both of them. If Jon—if the Archivist was being conditioned, as they suspected, then his development was proceeding apace.

It didn’t sit right, that so much of what they did by necessity played into the hands of the sinister forces threatening to consume them, but Martin couldn’t very well ask Jon to stop, now, could he? _I will if you will_ , Jon would say, well aware that Martin would never agree to those terms.

He had to know, though, if it was accelerating. If Jon had come into yet more strange powers as a result of this experience, or if he found that door calling to him more loudly than before, he would have to put his foot down, he would—

Again, Jon got there first.  

“Are you… It’s not getting any worse, is it?”

“No,” Martin answered honestly. “No, it’s...actually been better. Since you came back.”

Unfortunately, there was no easy way to say “thank you for missing me enough to help feed the _second_ horrible god looming over the Institute so that it doesn’t devour me,” but Jon probably knew.

“Good.” His voice was fierce. Martin could guess what he was thinking. Best not to let him dwell on it.

“What did you think of the rest of it?”

That did it. Jon perked up immediately. This, this was a problem they could do something about. Something to focus on. Another piece of the puzzle set snugly into place. 

“The Fifteenth? Well, it’s not great. But it’s about what we expected, isn’t it?”

From his pocket, he drew a tape recorder—Martin’s tape recorder. As he moved to hand it over, it clicked on hopefully.

“Stop that.”

The recorder turned off. Martin gave Jon his best scandalized expression as he took it from his hand.

“Don’t bully the poor thing, Jon!”

“They know better than to record down here,” Jon scoffed.

"It's just excited to hear from you,"  Martin replied, tucking the recorder into his own pocket and giving it a little pat.

“I can’t believe you nearly introduced yourself as ‘archival assistant.’” At last, Jon’s smile was full and sincere.

“Oh, shut up. I will _not_ be lectured on subtlety by the world’s worst liar.”

“Hey! I can lie.”

“After two hours of practice at saying ‘I miss you’ with a straight face, sure.”

Not to mention that the whole reason that they had needed an excuse to avoid each other in the first place was because Jon couldn’t seem to stop himself mentioning things Martin wasn’t meant to know.

“You have to admit, that was laying it on a bit thick.”

Martin sighed in faux exasperation.

“Normal expressions of human emotion aren’t _laying it on a bit thick_ , Jon.”

“Normal for some. Have you met me?”

“Yes…” he shrugged, “I suppose normal for you would be returning from the dead and asking me how my _poetry_ is coming along.”

 

* * *

 

An hour later, Martin exited the tunnels the way he had come. 

He had convinced Jon, with only minimal cajoling, to tell him the full story of his would-be anchor and time within the Buried. It was hard to decide what was worse: that Jon had tried to cut his own finger off, or that he couldn’t. At least the bit about Helen explained the new decor in the tunnels.

In the end, Jon had promised to pursue every possible avenue to follow up on Dekker’s statement, as well as search for anything related in the Archives—entirely unnecessarily, Martin felt, knowing as he did that he’d be lucky if Jon so much as remembered to sleep with a statement like this one to look into. He’d seemed so delighted to be discussing the Extinction as they took hurried bites from the sandwiches Martin had brought, notes spread out on the desk before them. An odd reaction to a looming existential threat, objectively, but not for Jon. It was impossible not to get caught up in his energy, and Martin...Martin hadn’t really wanted to leave. 

As he reentered the Magnus Institute, the chill, the feeling of being somehow bereft, returned immediately. But this, too, he could bear. Because Martin Blackwood saw the big picture, more clearly than Peter would ever realize.

There would be more time, later. Other chances to talk. So long as the world didn’t end.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this galaxy-brain take for a while, but I had so assumed that I would never get an opening to write about it that after this episode I laughed maniacally for several minutes.
> 
> anyway, as always, talk to me on tumblr @stopitjon


End file.
